MUS2026-071 - museum specimen
Asmat
Indonesia - Northwest Asmat, South Papua - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
bian English
Source term: bull-roarer
bian: Asmat word for the bullroarer, twirled during the Emak Cem initiation so that women flee and hide, its whirring taken for the voices of spirits (Asmat, south Papua). Pouwer 2010:145.
Among the Asmat of the south Papuan coast, the bull-roarer (bian) belongs to the months-long initiation staged in the Emak Cem ceremonial house, where boys are secluded while carvers work a spirit canoe for the dead in the back of the men's house. A boy who fell ill left the ceremonial house for the men's house and the living quarters, walking behind men who twirled bull-roarers so the women would run and hide; the whirring, with drums and bamboo flutes, impersonated the voices of spirits, and the noise broke off only when the spirit canoe was thrust downstream toward safan, the abode of the dead in the underworld, and the men on the riverbank fell to weeping. This particular blade, held by the Wereldmuseum in the Netherlands, is documented as an Asmat bull-roarer from northwest Asmat, but the museum's record notes no account of how it was used.
Boys who fall ill go to the men's house and the living quarters, preceded by men who twirl bullroarers (bian), so the women will run and hide.
Pouwer 2010, Gender, ritual and social formation in West Papua:145
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Asmat, Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. WM-72118).
- Function
- Asmat bian bull-roarer belongs to initiation contexts; men twirl it so women hide and it impersonates spirit voices.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- WM-72118
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women